The other day I was hanging out with some friends and they overheard my wife say “don’t poke the bear.” I think I was asking if we could watch like 400 hours of football on Sunday(her words, not mine) instead of cleaning the house or something. My friend burst out laughing. “That’s great! ‘Don’t poke the bear’, I love it.”  It got me thinking about some of the other verbal shorthand I use and verbal shorthand in general.

First let me say, I love verbal shorthand. I love a little inside joke with a loved one that expresses an idea in only a few words. I don’t mean things like LOL or BRB, although I do use those online like every other 21st century netizen. Here are some examples of what I mean…

Don’t poke the bear – This is what we say in our house when one of us is beginning to grow annoyed with the other one. If my wife sends me to the store for peanut butter and then calls as I’m already in the check out lane to say we need toilet paper I tell her “You are poking the bear.” It’s something said kind of playfully to diffuse a potentially annoying situation one of us is creating.

Too much hello – We say this when we have to go to a really boring social event full of extremely boring people. Do you remember in the beginning of the movie Sixteen Candles when Molly Ringwald’s grandparents arrive and perkily comment on her developing breasts? Imagine that same level of perkiness, but with the only exchange being “Hello!” and maybe commentary about the weather or the hors d’oeuvres spread, followed by nervous smiles and awkward pauses.

Oh, skycake – We say this when confronted with religious lunacy. It’s a reference to a Patton Oswalt bit. Patton talks about how he believes religion started because big bullies were going around beating up the little smart guys, thus the little smart guys convinced all the thugs that if they would lay off the murder and rape they’d go to heaven and it would be full of delicious cake. He goes on to say that the problem began when other thugs heard heaven was full of delicious pie and thus the religious wars began. So now, when we hear about some psycho bombing a clinic we say “oh skycake.” Shorthand for our exasperation with religious zealotry.

Positivity ’09 – (soon to be positivity 2010)- This is said sarcastically when one of us is in a bad mood. My wife will be going on about getting stuck in traffic and having to go to the DMV and our furnace breaking down in the middle of winter and I’ll say “Positivity ’09, honey”. We stole this from friends of ours who say it with complete sincerity when one of them is in a bad mood and the other is reminding that they should try to maintain a positive outlook. Since we revel in cynicism around here (we do live on the east coast, after all), my wife would probably smack me if I said this to her sincerely. When said jokingly, it usually gets a chuckle around here.

So what shorthand do you use with your friends and family? What does it mean and where did it come from?